Reading the Raven Boys
by life is short so am I
Summary: Blue, Gansey, Ronan, Adam and Noah find themselves in a forest with no idea how they got there. Then a book hits Ronan on the head. A reading the book fic. Set after the prologue but before the actually book starts.
1. The Summary

**I'm not quite sure that reading the books stuff is still allowed. If it is... Well, here you go! **

Blue Sargent wasn't a naturally suspicious person. Still, she felt a little uncomfortable around her half-Aunt. She felt really uncomfortable when the place she woke up in wasn't, in fact her room. Nor was she in her bed.

Instead she was on the forest floor, on a bed of leaves, surrounded by four boys.

And now she was past uncomfortable. One of them was glaring at her like she was the cause of all of his problems in life. Another had a hand on his shoulder, as if to restrain him. The other two were looking at her curiously. She silently nicknamed them Mr. President Guy, Soldier Boy, Smudgy Boy and Elegant Boy.

And that was before a book came flying out of nowhere and hit the glaring one on the back of his head.

Blue scrambled to her feet, and backed up to a tree. To say Soldier Boy didn't look happy would be an understatement.

"What's this?" Mr. President Guy said, picking up the book with his forefinger and his thumb, as if it would bite.

"A book," Soldier Boy said sarcastically.

"Hmm," Mr. President Gus said, turning it over to read the summary out loud, **"There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark's Eve. Either you're his true love... or you've killed him."**

Blue frowned. The boys seemed to forget that she was there, attention fixed on Mr. President Guy.

**"Every year, Blue Sargent-"**

"What!?" Blue said, eyes wide as the boys whipped towards her.

"What?" The Elegant Boy said, "Do you know what we're doing here?"

He seemed genuine, enough and the boys all seemed like they knew each other. So they didn't bring her there.

"No," Blue said after a moment, "My name is Blue Sargent."

"Oh, I'm Gansey. This is Adam, Ronan and Noah," Mr. President Guy said, pointing to Elegant Boy, Soldier Boy and Smudgy Boy, "So, book sounds interesting so far. Did somebody you know write it?"

"No. I didn't known that there was a book written with my name in it," she said eyeing it.

"Well, only way to know is to keep reading," Gansey said cheerfully, as if they weren't in the middle of the forest with no idea how they got there.

**"Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother the soon-to-be dead walk past." **Gansey read.

Blue frowned again, "That's true. It's true that we do that."

"How does that work?" Adam asked, frowning.

"My family is psychic," Blue said.

Ronan scoffed.

Rolling his eyes, Gansey started to read again, **"Blue never sees them - until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks to her."**

"What!" Blue exclaims, surprised, "That's impossible!"

"I thought you said that your family was psychic," Ronan said, eyes narrowed at her.

"I did," Blue said defiantly, "And my family is psychic. But I'm not."

"So you can only see the dead on St. Mark's Eve if you're psychic, you've killed them, or your their true love," Adam summarized.

Blue's eyes widened. _Oh._

Noah cleared his throat, "Maybe if we read more, it'll make more sense."

**"His name is-" **Gansey cuts himself off abruptly, face going pale as he stares blankly at the page.

"What?" Adam asked.

Ronan grabbed the book and scanned over the last couple of lines.

Scoffing, he passes the book back to Gansey, "You know that this crap isn't true. What, we wake up in a forest with some weird girl, and a book that says you're going to die. Please Gansey. I thought you had common sense."

"And I can't see the dead. So, you have no worries," Blue said, waving away his concerns.

"But," Gansey floundered, "You know what it said at the beginning."

"So she's either you true love or she killed you. We won't find out until we read it," Noah pointed out.

Ronan glared at her.

**"His name is Gansey, and he's a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school." **Gansey read.

Blue pulled a face.

**"Blue has a policy for staying away from Aglionby boys."**

"Why?" Noah asked.

Blue shook her head.

**"Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble."**

"Isn't that a little prejudiced?" Adam said frowning.

"Well, I've never met one that makes me reconsider, so no," Blue said.

**"But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way that she can't explain. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul whose emotions range from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher who notices many things but says very little." **

"Yep, sounds like us," Ronan snickers.

"How would anybody know that?" Adam says looking a little spooked.

"The same way we got here I suppose," Gansey shrugged.

**"For as long as she can remember, Blue has been told that she will cause her true love to die."**

"That's harsh," Adam sympathized.

Blue felt her face glowing red. Nobody outside of her family ever knew this.

"Please," Ronan muttered rolling his eyes.

**"She doesn't believe in true true love and never thought this would be a problem. But as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure anymore."**

"Right," Gansey said, putting away the book, "Explain."

"Well," Blue said, "My family is psychic, but I'm not. And they say that if I ever kiss my true love, he will die."

The boys sucked in a breath.

"I repeat my earlier statement. That's harsh," Adam said.

"I don't see the big idea, true love isn't real," Blue said.

"But that means that you can't kiss anybody, like, ever, incase they die," Noah said.

"Yeah. And I don't want to," Blue said, with steel in her eyes.

"But-" Adam started.

"I'm never going to be able to kiss anybody, so stop trying to convince me that it would be a good idea," Blue said.

The boys glanced at each other.

"Alright," Gansey said, sounding unconvinced.

Blue shot him a glare.

"Are we going to keep reading it?" Noah asked.

"No. I'm getting out of here," Ronan said.

As soon as he tried to leave though, he stopped.

"I thought you were going," Gansey said frowning at him.

"I'm trying. I can't move," Ronan growled.

Gansey and Adam stood up, but as soon as they got to Ronan, they stopped as well.

"So we can't leave," Gansey said, walking back to where Blue and Noah were sitting.

"How are we going to get food?" Adam asked, walking back as well.

Ronan just stood there. Until a picnic basket hit him on the head.

"Fucking hell," he growled, but he grabbed the picnic basket and walked back anyways.

"So I guess we're staying," Noah said.

"Well, if we're staying, we might as well read it," Ronan said eyeing it in distaste.

"Right," Gansey said, "I'm not going to read all of this to you. Blue, you're reading next."

The only thing that Blue could think was that her mom was going to no _so _worried.


	2. Prologue

**I forgot to say last chapter, that all of the bolded, except for AN's belong to Maggie Stiefvater. And the character too. I don't own any of it. At all. **

* * *

**Prologue**

**Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she's been told that she would kill her true love. Her family traded in predictions. These predictions tended to run toward the nonspecific.**

"But yours is specific," Adam pointed out.

"I'm an anomaly," Blue shrugged.

**Things like:** _**Something terrible is going to happen today. It might involve the number six. **_**Or: **_**Money is coming. Open your hand for it. **_**Or: **_**You have a big decision and it will not make itself. **_

"That sound like a load of crap," Ronan said.

"Your a load of crap," Blue muttered.

Noah, who sat right beside her and the only one who heard her, snorted.

**The people who came to the little, bright blue house at 300 Fox Way didn't mind the imprecise nature of their fortunes. It became a game, a challenge, to realize the exact moment that the predictions came true.**

"Sounds interesting. I might go sometime when we get out of here," Gansey said.

Everybody ignored the "if we get out of here," from Ronan

Blue shrugged, "I suppose. Some people don't find the things that their looking for though," she warned.

**When a van carrying six people wheeled into a client's car two hours after the psychic reading, he could nod with a sense of accomplishment and release. **

Ronan raised an eyebrow, "Who would feel accomplished when their car gets wrecked?"

**When a neighbor offered to buy old lawn mower if she was looking for a bit of extra cash, she could recall the promise of money coming and sell it with the sense that the transaction had been foretold. Or when a third client heard his wife say, **_**This is a decision that has to be made, **_**he could remember the same words being said by Maura Sargent over a spread of tarot cards and then leap decisively into action. **

"Is Maura your mom?" Noah asked Blue.

"Yeah, she's awesome," she said.

"What's your dad's name?" asked Adam.

"I don't know," Blue told him, "He died before I was born and my mom never told me."

**But the imprecise nature of the fortunes stole some of their power. The predictions could be dismissed as coincidences, hunches. They were a chuckle in the Walmart parking lot when you ran into an old friend as promised. A shiver when the number seventeen appeared on the electric bill. A realization that even if you discovered the future, it didn't change how you lived in the present. **

"Oh," Adam muttered,"That's what you mean by you don't always find what you're looking for."

"It's not always that though. Sometimes you get the news that you, or somebody you know are not going to make it to see next year," Blue said, eyes flickering to Gansey.

They all stared at him.

"It's fine, maybe this book will show us how to change it," Gansey said.

"Maybe this book isn't even true, did you ever think of that?" Ronan said.

"You don't really believe that, do you," Gansey stated.

Ronan was silent.

**"I should tell you," Maura always advised her new clients, "that this reading will be accurate, but not specific."**

**It was easier that way. **

**But this was not what Blue was told. Again and again, she had her fingers spread wide, her palm examined, her cards plucked from velvet-edged decks and spread across the fuzz of a family friend's living room carpet. Thumbs were pressed to the mystical, invisible third eye that was said to lie between everyone's eyebrows. **

"Really?" Gansey asked, holding his hand between his eyebrows.

"I wouldn't know," Blue shrugged.

**Runes were cast and dreams interpreted, tea leaves scrutinized and séances conducted. **

**All the women came to the same concision, blunt and inexplicably specific. What the all agreed on, in many different clairvoyant languages was this: if Blue were to kiss her true love, he would die. **

"How would he die?" Adam asked.

"It never said," Blue said.

**For a long time, this bothered Blue. The warning was specific, certainly, but in the way of a fairy tale. It didn't say how her true love would die. It didn't say how long after the kiss he would survive. Did it have to be a kiss in the lips? Would a chaste peck on the back of his palm prove deadly?**

The boys all cringed.

"I didn't like the uncertainty," Blue said, "that's all. I don't need to kiss anybody."

But it seemed like she was trying to convince herself as well.

**Until she was eleven, Blue was convinced she would silently contract an infectious disease. One press of her lips to her hypothetical soulmate and he, too, would die in a consumptive battle untameable by the modern medicine. **

"I see what you mean by the uncertainty," Gansey said.

**When she was thirteen, Blue decided that jealousy would kill him instead - an old boyfriend emerging at the moment of that first kiss, bearing a handgun and a heart full of hurt. **Blue read, her face burning red.

Ronan snorted.

"Well," Noah read slowly, "you're pretty enough for it."

Adam eyes her, face turning a little red.

Blue's face turned redder, "Thanks."

**When she turned fifteen, Blue concluded that her mothers tarot cards were just a pack of playing cards and that the dreams of her mother and the other clairvoyant women were furled by mixed drinks rather than otherworldly insight, and so the prediction didn't matter. **

"See? It's not true," Ronan said, "Can we eat now?" He said holding up the picnic basket.

"After this chapter," Gansey said.

**She knew better though. The predictions that came out of 300 Fox Way were unspecific, but undeniably true. Her mother had dreamt Blue's broke wrist on the first day of school. **

"And she still let you go to school?" One of the boys said incredulously.

"Yes," Blue said.

**Her aunt Jimi predicted Maura's tax return to within ten dollars. Her older cousin Orla always began to hum her favourite song a few minutes before it came on the radio. **

"That's actually really cool," Adam said.

Blue flashed him a grin.

**No one in the house really doubted that Blue was destined to kill her true love with a kiss. It was a threat, however, that had been around for so long that it had lost its force. **

"That's dangerous," Gansey warned.

Blue rolled her eyes.

**Picturing a six-year-old Blue in love was such a far-off thing thing as to be imaginary. **

"Ah," Gansey said, "yes, that would be weird."

"I can't really picture you in love as you are now," Ronan said.

"Nor can I," Blue agreed.

**And by sixteen, Blue had decided she would never fall in love, so it didn't matter. **

"I don't think it's something you can decide," Adam said softly.

"Even if I did, he'd know never to kiss me. I'd tell him," Blue said.

**But that belief changed when her mother's half sister Neeve came into their little town of Henrietta. Neeve had gotten famous for doing loudly what Bleu's mother did quietly. Maura's readings we're done in her front room, mostly for residents of Henrietta and the valley around it. Neeve, in the other hand, did her readings on television at five o'clock in the morning. She had a website featuring old soft-focus photographs of her staring unerringly at the viewer. **

"It's creepy. She arrived a few days ago. She doesn't even blink," Blue said.

"Show us," Gansey demanded with a good natured smile.

"I don't think I can. I'd look weird or just laugh," Blue said.

**Four books on the supernatural bore her name on the cover. Blue had never met Neeve, so she knew more about her half aunt from a cursory web search than from personal experience. Blue wasn't sure why Neeve was coming to visit, but she knew her imminent arrival spurred a legion of whispered conversation between Maura and her two best friends, Persephone and Calla - the sort of conversations that trade off into sipping coffee and tapping pens on the table when Blue entered the room. **

"Calla and Persephone are psychic too," Blue told them.

"Their not your aunts?" Adam asked.

"No, but sometimes it feels like they are," Blue said.

**But Blue wasn't particularly concerned about Neeves arrival; what was one more woman in a house filled to the brim with them?**

"How many people live in your house?" Adam asked.

"Well, there's my mom and I, my cousin Orla, my aunt Jimi, my half aunt Neeve, my moms best friends Calla and Persephone. So seven people in total," Blue said.

Ronan let out a whistle.

"That's a lot of people," Adam said impressed, "how big is the house?"

"It's just a two story house. Not big at all," Blue informed them.

**Neeve finally appeared on a spring evening when the already long shadows of the mountains to the west seemed even longer than usual. **

"She'll be coming around the mountains when she comes," Ronan sung.

Blue snorted.

**When Blue opened the door for her, she thought, for a moment, that Neeve was an unfamiliar old woman, but then her eyes grew used to the stretched crimson light coming through the trees, and she saw that Neeve was barely older than her mother, which is not very old at all. **

"How flattering," Ronan said flatly.

**Outside, in the distance, hounds were crying. Blue was familiar enough with their voices; each fall, the Aglionby Hunt Club rode out with horses and foxhounds nearly every weekend. **

Blue shook her head.

"What?" Gansey said, confused.

"It's just... Your school is so rich it's funny," Blue said.

**Blue knew what their frantic howls meant at that moment: They were on the chase. **

**"You're Maura's daughter," Neeve said, and before Blue could answer, she added, "this is the year you'll fall in love."**

The boys shivered.

"Well," Blue said passing the book to Noah, and swallowing thickly, "Breakfast time?"


End file.
